


Gotham City Floral

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham City Sirens (Comics)
Genre: F/F, little shop of horrors au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 00:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11196492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: Pamela, "Ivy", Isley sees no way out for her, or the other employee of Gotham City Floral...until one day, she finds a small plant in an unassuming pot...with a strange taste for human blood.





	Gotham City Floral

Gotham City was a poor place to open a flower shop. Between the crime ridden streets and the urban strife, you couldn’t expect much of a customer base. But the old man had died, leaving the shop to Ivy, and running it was the only life she could see. 

She should have been finishing university, going into research. Could have been a real botanist. She had the drive- everyone knew that- hence why everyone had taken to calling her “Ivy” instead of Pamela. But Dr. Woodrue had made sure that wasn’t going to happen. The dull-green scars on her arms still ached and itched, a constant reminder of her fall from grace. 

She still studied, and experimented. The back of the shop was filled with books and notes and half grown specimens more likely to frighten rather than intrigue potential customers. She spent her days selling bunches of roses to businessmen to sneak to their mistresses and blandly sentimental bouquets on occasions which had been forgotten until almost too late. She spent her nights sweeping, and bent over her plants and her books, no one else in the world caring if she were alive or dead. 

Anyone except-

“Hey Ivy!” The blonde announced cheerfully as she entered the shop. The other woman was practically like a beam of sunlight- blonde pigtails and bright makeup and a huge smile. 

“You’re late again, Harley” Ivy responds before trailing off and noticing the large bruise covering one side of her face. She reaches out to touch it gently. 

“Sorry Red, won’t happen again, “ Harley responds, pushing her hand away. 

Ivy mutters under her breath, “That’s what you said the last time you ‘didn’t get the joke’”. 

It incensed her. Harley Quinn was an impossibility. She had had as rough a childhood as Ivy had- had nearly dragged herself from the streets of Gotham into university only to be seduced off by that damn clown she called “Mr J”. Bad enough he was a criminal who used his bizarre persona as a cover, bad enough she kept crawling back to him no matter how often he hit her, how badly he treated her…The last time he had come around on his motorcycle, flashing that overly shiny grin and pushing both of them around, Ivy had felt so many curses boiling in her chest, tell offs and rebukes….none of which she had managed to say. Harley, it seemed was never going to. 

But she was always smiling, always happy to see the rare customer. Despite her hardships, she seemed to have been spared the misanthropy that plagued Ivy, even when she was Pamela. 

She was the only person in this world Ivy enjoyed being around, and trusted. Being around her was the only truly good part of her day. And somehow, she just didn’t seem to be able to tell her that. 

“Oh, I wanted to show you this”. Ivy says, both changing the subject and getting to something she had meant to. 

The something is a plant in a terra cotta pot. It’s tiny now, but it’s bulb is tilted as though a mouth, and Ivy has never seen one before with coloration like it, mottled pink almost along the stems, before gradually scaling back to a deep green. 

“Oh neat! Where’d you get it?”

“I sneak back into the lab at GU sometimes. One of the TA’s occasionally sneaks me cuttings, because she knows how much I miss getting to study them. She said this one popped up in a planter after the eclipse a few weeks ago. It’s really sickly, and she didn’t know what it was, but she said I could have it and try to figure it out”. 

Harley reaches out and gently touches one of the leaves. 

“What are you going to call it?”

“I’ve been calling it Harley 2, or twoey”. 

Harley giggles, and Ivy’s chest tightens. It had been the first name she could come up with, and it felt natural. 

“You’re as cute as me, aint you Harley 2?”

“I’m hoping if I put it in the front window, it’ll drum up some more customers.” 

But the tiny potted plant just sits there, alone in the window all afternoon. 

Around 4 o’clock and still no customers, Ivy sighs and says. 

“You should go home early, Harley. Get some ice on that shiner. “

The other woman nods her head, but Ivy notices she doesn’t seem to perk up. 

Outside the door of the shop, Harley exchanges words with Selina, one of the other women who seemed to spend too much of her time on this damn street. 

“Girl, when are you finally going to kick that clown out with his own rubber mallet?’

Harley shook her head. 

“He loves me, Selina. He says he does. Where else am I going to get that?”

The rage in Ivy’s gut builds. But it stays there. As much of a misanthrope that she had become, Pamela had been timid, shy. And even after being used as a human guinea pig, abused with the very plants she had devoted her life, inside she was still that same spineless child. 

Harley pushes off Selina’s concerned touch, and crosses the street to her tiny apartment.

Now by herself. Ivy sighs, and touches Twoey’s stems. 

“And as for you, I don’t know what to do. You can’t bring us any business if you keep trying to die on me. “

She run through all her knowledge she’d gained in school. Fertilizer, more water, less water. More sun, less sun. She’d trimmed it back and staked the stem. She’d even tried this supplement mix she had stashed that smelled like rotting fish, and still nothing. 

“Guess that’ll be my lot in life,” she grouses, moving to bunch up the display roses and put them back in the main refrigerator. “Selling flowers in Crime Alley, a little in love with the girl who doesn’t know I care, or might not even believe me if I tell her..”

She grabs the last bouquet roughly, and yelps. 

“Damn roses, you’re as painful as what you smooth over.” 

She reaches up to soothe the tiny wound, when out of the corner of her eye, she notices Twoey on the table. It’s bud had opened, as though it were a mouth. 

“What do you want from me blood? I’m pretty sure that’s just a saying”. 

But still…

Ivy cocks her head. 

“I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

The plant seems almost to shake and quiver as the drop enters the bud. Almost instantly, the stem seems to perk up and the leaves stand a little higher. 

Ivy grabs her notepad, furiously scribbling. 

“Carnivorous plants aren’t common...and it seems perfectly adapted to human blood….I wonder if it would have to be human.”

Her musings are interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle pulling up, followed all too loudly of the door slamming at one of the apartment buildings just across the street. That fucking clown….

Harley 2 catches the corner of her line of sight. She wonders. 

“And even if it does have to be human...does it have to be mine?”


End file.
